THIS WEEKEND
After a three year absense, Sylvester Stallone returned to the number one
spot at the nation's box office with Cop
Land which took in $13.5M over the weekend.
Edging out holdovers Air Force One
and Conspiracy Theory,
Cop Land
registered the biggest opening weekend for its distributor Miramax beating
the $11.8M opening of The Crow
in May 1994. Playing in over 2,200 theaters, it was also the second widest
release for the House of Weinstein after The
Crow : City of Angels which was let loose
in over 2,400 theaters in 1996. Overall, it was a solid debut for a promising
action-drama which was the first number one debut for Stallone since The
Specialist in 1994. Reviews have generally
been positive which should make Cop Land
a strong performer during the final weeks of the summer. The table below
shows the performances (in millions of dollars) of Stallone's last six
films:

Opening Gross

Total Gross

Release Date

Daylight

10.0

32.9

Dec
1996

Assassins

9.4

30.3

Oct
1995

Judge
Dredd

12.3

34.7

Jun
1995

The
Specialist

14.3

57.4

Oct
1994

Demolition
Man

14.3

58.1

Oct
1993

Cliffhanger

20.5

84.0

May
1993

The
$13.5M opening for Cop Land was
close to my $12M prediction. Air Force
One remained in second dropping 31% to
$12.4M which was a little more than my guess of $12.3M. The Harrison Ford
actioner remains on its blockbuster course with over $130M to date. After
24 days of release AFO
is running 12% ahead of the pace of 1993's The
Fugitive which eventually grossed $183.9M.
Last weekend's top movie Conspiracy Theory
dropped by 36%, which is normal, to third with $12.3M - close to my forecast
of $12.5M. Its ten-day total now stands at $40.7M. With an unusually high
number of A-list stars with movies in August, the box office is ending
another summer in record territory. Three films grossed over $10M this
weekend which is rare for August. The last such August occurance was during
the weekend of August 12-14, 1994 when Clear
and Present Danger, Forrest
Gump, and The
Mask all hit double-digits.

Opening in fourth was
Event Horizon
with $9.5M. The Laurence Fishburne sci-fi film had a wide release and delivered
a very good opening for Paramount which claims Face/Off
as its only big hit of the summer season. Science-fiction films usually
erode quickly so look for Horizon
to reach a total gross of about $30M. With about $9.5M, its opening was
much better than the $7M I predicted.

Dropping a mighty 44%
to fifth was Spawn
which passed the $46M mark. George of the
Jungle and Men
in Black performed extremely well as each
dipped by less than 26%. MIB
is now within $1M of overtaking The Lost
World as the top-grossing picture of the
summer. The weekend's only other wide release, Steel
starring Shaquille O'Neal, melted as it collected less than $1M. For Warner
Bros., it was their third straight disaster after last weekend's Free
Willy 3, and 187
which opened the weekend before that.

Overall, the top ten
films grossed $70.5M - up 29% from last year and up less than 1% from 1995.
Below are final
studio figures. Click on the title to jump to its official home page.